


to warn us it's only a matter of time before we all burn

by searchingforstars



Series: febuwhump/fluff 2020! [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Burns, Gen, Guilty Peter Parker, Hospitals, House Break-In, Hurt Pepper Potts, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a Mess, Peter Parker's ridiculously large guilt complex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22607059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/searchingforstars/pseuds/searchingforstars
Summary: This can’t be real.How can it be real?Horrible flashes of Prague, Molten Man and Beck burn themselves into the front of his mind but Peter shakes them away. Fire isn’t something that happens to him. It can’t be. It happens to people who leave oil on the stovetop for too long, people who smoke carelessly, people whose houses have faulty wiring.He's just meant to throw himself into these peoples’ lives for a while to save their cats, their photo albums, bring everything to safety.It’s not meant to happen tothishouse, not anywhere near where Morgan or Pepper or Tony are…Oh god.--or, the lake house burns down, Pepper's hurt and Peter blames himself.
Relationships: Happy Hogan/May Parker (Spider-Man), Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: febuwhump/fluff 2020! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622380
Comments: 41
Kudos: 466





	to warn us it's only a matter of time before we all burn

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompts:  
> 5\. intruder (febuwhump)  
> 6\. fire (febuwhump)  
> 7\. hugs (febufluff)  
> 8\. dark state of mind (febuwhump)
> 
> enjoy x

Peter’s on a mission.

Sure, maybe it’s a little less high-stakes than usual - there's not an alien or criminal or murderous bot in sight - but as the faded green glow of the time displayed on his dashboard blinks up at him, _11:39pm_ , he’s just looking forward to just getting it over with and getting into bed.

It’s probably too late to be driving anyway, at least when you’re a newly licensed teenager like Peter.

It’s _definitely_ too late when you’re newly licensed teenager like Peter who as of seven hours ago sat his AP calculus exam to mark the end of weeks upon hellish weeks of studying for finals.

Then, May and Happy insisted on taking him out for dinner, which worked just fine for him because he needed an excuse to get on the road a little later anyway, arriving at the lake house when he knew everyone would be already in bed.

Great idea in theory, but now that he’s struggling to keep his eyes open a little, he’s not sure he’s ever been so grateful to turn into the rural tree-lined road he knows so well.

It’s deserted mostly, save for a few flickering street lamps and a single car idling on the side of the road not too far from the gates to the house.

Peter’s used to this, the sight of reporters camped outside to try and catch a glimpse of the man arriving or leaving. He saved the world, after all, that’s given him pretty serious street cred (and a pretty serious sum above his head for paparazzi shots of him out and about, especially since he wasn’t seen for months during his recovery.)

Despite all this, Peter knows this optimistic reporter is placing his bets on the wrong night if he’s staking a camp out to try and get a shot of Tony Stark leaving his house tomorrow morning. Saturday morning is pancake morning, a completely unmissable tradition that involves more sugar and syrup than one should ever probably consume in one sitting.

None of them will be leaving the house if pancake morning is done right.

Peter pulls past the parked car and up in front of the gates, making sure he’s not visible as he stretches an arm out the window to punch in the security code for the gates.

Everything is all too easy after that, pulling the car in as quietly as possible and parking behind Pepper’s, grabbing his suit from where it’s sitting on the passenger seat and creeping across the gravel as lightly as he can so it doesn’t crunch beneath his sneakers.

He lets himself into the garage with the spare key he’s got dangling off his key-ring - a LEGO R2D2 that he’d braved the LEGO store in Rockefeller Center for especially - and he’s in.

The space is eerie and quiet at night, bots powered down in the corner and everything neat and tidy - the way Tony likes to leave his spaces now when he’s not in the room, in case Morgan decides to come in for an explore while he’s not here.

Peter figures everything’s probably about to become slightly less neat and tidy once he gets started, and he spreads his suit across the workbench and gets to work.

* * *

Logically, Peter knows he shouldn’t be sneaking around.

He’s gotten better at trying to be more open with Tony, admitting when he needs help when he’s managed to end up way over his head and out of his depth. But he also likes to stay in Tony’s good books.

Tony doesn’t need to know that Peter was out patrolling last night, the night before his final calculus exam.

He does _not_ need to know that the robber Peter went up against yesterday night had a knife.

He _definitely_ doesn’t need to know that the robber managed to catch Peter a couple of times in the thigh with said knife.

It’s fine anyway. It’s pretty much healed this morning, aside from a few twinges of pain when he twists a little funny. It didn’t even need stitches.

Tony will want to know why Peter didn’t call him though, and that’s just a whole thing that Peter doesn’t want to get into. Tony’s retired - he doesn’t need to be rushing down to the city to smooth bandaids on Peter’s tiny patrol scrapes, no matter how many times he insists that it’s his job and he’d like to be kept informed, _thank you very much_.

So everything is just easier this way. Sneak into the garage - easy, already done. Fix the suit and maybe upgrade the coding a little bit - hell yeah, he’s here now, so why not.

Peter’s brows are furrowed ever so slightly as he works, concentrating on soldering together the two wires that he’s hoping will fix the issue he’s been having with Karen. Some of the wiring must have torn with the suits’ fabric because he can’t seem to get her to communicate normally when he activates her. She’s just a string of garbled nonsense that Peter can’t understand no matter how hard he tries.

He’s so caught up in what he’s doing that at first, he doesn’t notice the rustling outside.

It’s quiet. Nothing that probably couldn’t be passed off as a wild rabbit or one of the foxes that Morgan’s so fond of, but as it draws louder it takes on the distinct sound of human footsteps and Peter pulls himself away from his work for a second to glance out the window.

He can’t make out anything in the darkness outside, but he knows that it’s not uncommon for Tony to wander this late at night if he can’t sleep - he’ll go visit Gerald, or sit down by the dock, maybe tinker with Morgan’s treehouse.

For a second, he debates whether or not he should flick the lights off and try and pretend he’s not here but then he realises that’s just _dumb_. He told Tony he was coming up tonight, his car is in the driveway and if Tony’s about to walk right in here and find him pouring over his torn up Spider-Man suit then he’s brought that upon himself, he supposes.

He picks up the soldering iron again and goes back to work for all of ten seconds before he realises that the footsteps are fading. They’re not heading for the garage at all. They’re heading away, the sound disappearing into the distance.

That’s Peter’s first sign that something’s not quite right.

When he hones his ears in on the sound, he can still hear the footsteps somewhere in the distance and it makes the base of his neck tingle in warning.

The second warning sign that something very, very wrong is happening is when Peter’s watch begins to buzz against his wrist. It’s flashing with an alert from FRIDAY and he takes a moment to switch out the garage lights, deciding that now it’s probably highly warranted, before turning his full attention to FRIDAY.

“Talk to me, FRI. There’s someone out there. Is it Tony?” he asks, still distantly clinging on to some sort of hope that maybe it’s just Tony taking one of his midnight walks - maybe he just missed the light pouring through the garage windows. He can get stuck in his head sometimes, especially after a bad dream.

 _That could be it_ , Peter thinks.

He tries to ignore the fact that he knows he’s kidding himself. Tony would be heading in here the second he’d seen the light on, Peter knows that for a fact. He’s spent too many nights trying to hide himself away in here when he can’t sleep but he’s almost always coaxed out by Tony. Despite himself and his own habits, he’s insistent with Peter that none of the best work will get done when he’s running on no sleep and that late nights are better spent in front of some rubbish TV than in front of potentially dangerous electronics and weapons.

Tony would have dragged him out of here by now, or at the very least made himself comfortable somewhere in the corner, out of the way, where he can keep a tired eye on Peter to make sure he doesn’t accidentally blow himself up.

“It is not Boss,” FRIDAY confirms, her voice hushed by the low volume Peter’s watch is set to, “my security cameras are picking up an intruder on the property. I expect this is the man you are making reference to. It appears he may have followed your car in the gates by foot.”

_How the fuck did he not notice that?_

Peter casts his mind back, trying to remember whether he’d seen anything when he first pulled in here tonight, but he’s just coming to blanks until he remembers the black car idling outside the driveway and he curses himself for not being more cautious.

Guilt and anxiety curdle in his stomach, wrapping itself tightly around his lungs.

“Are Pepper and Tony awake? Do they know?” Peter mutters into his watch. He’s crouched down now, pressed into the workbench - just in case.

“My read on Boss’s vitals tell me that he’s asleep. I have been trying to contact him via his watch but I have been unsuccessful in waking him.” On any other night, a usual night, this would be a _great_ thing. It means that Tony’s sleeping deeply and soundly, actually getting enough rest for once, but tonight Peter needs him _awake._ “According to my security cameras, Mrs Stark is currently in the living room reading a book. She is not wearing her watch and I have no way to contact her.”

It’s times like these when Peter _really_ misses FRIDAY being wired into the walls.

Peter drags in a steadying breath, eyes falling onto his suit still spread across the workbench and then he asks the question he’s not sure he wants to know the answer to. “Uh, FRIDAY? This guy, does he seem dangerous?”

“I am unable to gather enough footage to run behavioural patterns, but I believe he is in possession of a gun,” FRIDAY relays, and Peter’s heart stutters dangerously in his chest. His eyes trace back to the suit. “I recommend having me notify the police department. The current ETA is twenty-five minutes.”

Peter shakes his head a little. Twenty-five minutes is too long - _far_ too long to let an intruder, who wants god knows what but who’s got a _gun_ , roam the outside of the very house where three of the people Peter loves the most in the world are currently residing, unaware and totally vulnerable.

Okay. Okay. This could be up to him then. That’s totally fine. He deals with these sorts of things on a daily basis. He doesn’t want to think about the fact that it’s sort of different when it’s happening in your own home.

There’s only one option here.

“FRI, hold off on the police for now. I’ve got this.”

* * *

Peter’s as quiet as he can be as he slips out the back door of the garage, webbing himself up onto the roof.

His suit is still a little torn, and he didn’t have time to re-upload Karen after he rebooted the suits’ systems but that’s fine. His web-shooters are working and that’s the main thing.

He’s got this.

Trying to be as light-footed as he possibly can be, Peter creeps across the shingles on the roof.

There’s faint light coming from below him, washing out into the garden below him. It’s coming from the reading nook where Pepper must be, the glow flickering slightly every few seconds. It’ll be the intricately-ornate and yet stubbornly temperamental lamp that they keep in the corner there, one of the few things Tony’s hung onto from the house he grew up in. Peter’s pretty sure it had been one of his own mother’s favourites, but Tony doesn’t voluntarily talk about it much and Peter doesn’t like to push.

He’s got half a mind to duck down and see if he can tap on the window to get Pepper’s attention, tell her to get the hell out of there, but there are a few other lights on around the house - the light in the laundry everyone always forgets to turn off, the back porch light, the light in Pepper and Tony’s ensuite (probably left on because Tony isn’t a huge fan of complete darkness anymore).

Peter really doesn’t want to risk drawing attention to where Pepper is so he stands above the living room for a second, hoping maybe she can feel him there, even though she has no idea he’s there and ( _hopefully_ ) has no idea that anything is even wrong, before he leaps.

He swings from the roof on an overhanging branch of the oak tree Morgan’s tyre swing is attached as deftly as he can, towards the last direction he heard the footsteps heading - round by Tony and Pepper’s bedroom. It makes unease churn in Peter’s gut, and he webs himself towards another tree, quickly tucking himself away behind the branches when he catches sight of the intruder.

He’s just… standing there. Staring up into the windows on the second floor. Completely still, shrouded in the darkness of the still night around him.

It’s unnerving but quite honestly, not really new to Peter, the sight of a suspicious-looking man in a dark hoodie. He’s thrown himself into the middle of enough bank robberies, car-jackings and muggings to know that these kinds of people exist, and yeah, they’re the scum of the earth but Peter can deal with it. He just has to be calm, web himself down quietly and get the man as far away from the house.

Until suddenly he freezes up a little as the man turns ever so slightly, and something in the back of his jeans glints and gleams in the moonlight. _Gunmetal._ It’s nothing FRIDAY hasn’t already told him, but seeing it is an entirely different thing, the way it’s so casually stowed away in his back pocket - as if he might need it but hasn’t quite decided whether or not he’s going to draw upon it.

It’s the last straw when the man turns from Tony and Pepper’s window to gaze up towards Morgan’s and realistically there’s _no way_ he can know where everyone is, who’s sleeping soundly behind each curtain-drawn window. Peter could probably almost use just two hands to count the number of people who have been allowed access to the entire house in the whole time he’s been back.

Even so, some sort of territorial instinct, the urge to protect the place and the people he loves rips through Peter with violent force. He throws a web out towards the side of the house, slinging himself down to land behind the man, close enough that he whips around, eyes widening at the sight of Peter - Spider-Man - right behind him.

His hand shifts towards his back pocket, and Peter extends his wrist forward without really thinking about it, shooting out a web to web the man’s hand to his side. The gun remains out of reach.

“What the _fuck_ ,” the man seethes, but Peter just shakes his head a little, gritting his teeth as his eyes narrow through the mask.

He’s tired, right down to the bone.

Finals have sucked all the energy out of him. Tonight, all he wanted to do was patch up his suit in the quiet of the garage before being able to retire into a familiar bed with the promise of being woken up far too early the next morning by Morgan and an armful of about five of her stuffed animals - all wanting to snuggle - while Tony makes pancakes downstairs.

“I’m not doing this tonight, man. Breaking and entering is _never_ cool, but just come with me and this doesn’t have to get-”

Peter’s cut off with a tiny jolt of shock as the man kicks his legs out, strong calves trying to catch under his own and knock him to the ground but he avoids them deftly, wasting no time in reaching out and webbing the man’s legs together as well.

“-messy,” Peter finishes, eyeing the man who’s now sprawled on the dew-dampened grass, glaring up at him.

He’s now got a problem though. Turns out it’s hard to coerce someone to follow you away from the scene so he can web him up properly to get FRIDAY to alert the police when the someone in question can’t walk for having his legs bound together with web fluid.

He wants him away from the house, he knows that for certain.

He doesn’t want the police arriving on the scene only for the chaos to be right outside the front door. He doesn’t want any stray bullets flying around if it gets messy again. He doesn’t want Morgan coming out and finding a stranger in her front garden if she hears the interruption. Plus, Peter thinks, ironically tonight of all nights is the night that Tony is finally getting a good night's sleep. It would be kind of a dick move for Peter to interrupt that, even if it is for a gun-wielding man that he’s just webbed up right underneath his bedroom window.

So it’s with the residual adrenaline pumping through him and the sheer desperation to just be able to be done and _go to bed_ , Peter hauls the man up with him and over his shoulder, ignoring the squirming and resisting, to head deeper into the woodland in the back garden.

He wants him as far away as possible, away from the house and away from Tony, Pepper and Morgan.

He’ll dump him in the forest, web him to a tree, get FRIDAY to call the police to the scene and go to bed to let them deal with it. He’ll just tell Tony and Pepper in the morning. It’ll all be fine.

He manages to find a strong enough looking tree to web the man to before long, and it’s a relief when he can turn around and begin to make the trek back to the house. It really is all fine. He knows he needs to get back to the garage to reupload Karen, or at the very least replace his web-shooters with his watch again so he can contact the police. He needs a rest though.

Today has been _too much_.

As he walks, branches and leaves crunching underfoot, he has to remind himself to breathe, lungs growing tight from feeling like he’s been holding his breath out of concentration for the last ten minutes. But the second he takes the chance to breathe in deeply, inhaling to try and inflate his lungs with oxygen, his nose is filled with the smell of smoke.

He briefly wonders if he was a bit too aggressive with the soldering iron and something’s still smouldering within the suit. That just adds yet another thing to the list of repairs he has to make before he can crawl into bed.

That thought very quickly disappears from his head when he blinks up towards the sky through the trees for the first time and notices for slight red haze just starting to form along the dark horizon.

There’s a crackling sound, quietened by distance and the dense woodland Peter’s still surrounded by, but it’s there all the same. It reminds Peter of quiet evenings in front of the fireplace in the Starks’ living room, board games spread around them at Morgan’s request.

The faint smell of smoke washes through the filters in his mask again.

He stands there for a second longer, dumbfounded. He watches the red creep higher into the night sky. Holy shit.

_Holy shit._

He _runs_.

* * *

Peter remembers being a kid, how in awe he was on fire safety days when firefighters would turn up in their red trucks, sirens blazing for the purposes of entertaining the crowds of elementary school kids eagerly awaiting their arrival.

Peter remembers getting to try out the fire hoses, remembers being taught all about ‘stop, drop and roll,’ remembers how in awe he was of these people who dedicated their entire lives to _helping people_.

Then he remembers being in middle school. He remembers the scarier things, the fire safety days that no longer included messing around and getting to tour the fire trucks, but instead now included the facts they needed to stay alive.

He remembers that it only takes thirty seconds for a flame to turn into a house fire. It only takes minutes for smoke to fill a room.

He remembers coming home from school and bugging May and Ben until they checked the expiry on the fire extinguisher and showed him how to use it.

He didn’t want to be useless if anything ever happened.

That’s exactly how he feels now though. Completely and utterly useless as he screeches to a halt, gravel of the driveway crunching under his feet. The crackling is louder now, roaring in his ears. Heat surrounds him. No amount of safety lessons could have ever prepared him for this.

Everything is on fire.

One side of the house is engulfed in flames, licking at the exterior and climbing higher, attacking whatever it can reach. Smoke billows off the burning timber in thick black clouds.

Confusion clouds Peter’s head feels like the smoke and he can’t think straight. He’s rooted to the spot.

Nothing feels real.

How is this happening?

Peter’s sure he didn’t let the man get close enough to start something like this. He dealt with it.

This can’t be real.

How can it be real?

Horrible flashes of Prague, Molten Man and Beck burn themselves into the front of his mind but he shakes them away. Fire isn’t something that happens to him. It can’t be. It happens to people who leave oil on the stovetop for too long, people who smoke carelessly, people whose houses have faulty wiring. Peter’s just meant to throw himself into these peoples’ lives for a while to save their cats, their photo albums, bring everything to safety.

It’s not meant to happen to _this_ house, not anywhere near where Morgan or Pepper or Tony are…

_Oh god._

Peter’s running again, round the side of the house towards Tony’s room, which is thankfully, _thankfully_ , away from where the fire is consuming the kitchen, the laundry, the garage.

Tony’s at the window, the curtains open and pane’s pulled open as wide as they’ll go. He’s clearly looking for a way out, eyeing the guttering. Morgan’s there as well, thank god, tucked into Tony’s arms with her head pressed down into the fabric of his sleeping shirt, one of his hands resting on the crown of her head to keep it there.

There’s too much smoke for her little lungs. Too much smoke for Tony’s weakened lungs.

Peter scales the wall and Tony’s eyes widen then he visibly pales with relief as he makes eye contact with Peter. If the man registers that he’s in his Spider-Man suit, or even just wonders why he’s here in the first place and is now clinging to the wooden boarding on the side of the house, he doesn’t mention it.

He’s flushed from the heat up close, and Morgan is shaking a little.

“Tony,” Peter gets out, slightly desperately as he leans in through the open window. He’s already reaching for Morgan, who squirms at the sound of Peter’s voice and tries to turn her head to get a glimpse of him. Tony tightens his grip on her head the tiniest bit, keeping it pressed against him. He shushes her gently but pulls back when he notices Peter trying to get a hold of her.

“I can take her, I’ll bring her down and come back for-”

“No. No. Pepper,” Tony gasps out and dread sinks like lead in Peter’s stomach. “She was - she never came up to bed, she was downstairs, I - I don’t know, she must still be. I tried to get down there but the stairs are blocked and I-”

Peter cuts off Tony’s breathless, panicked rambling with one quick, sharp nod. He thinks back to what FRIDAY told him before, that Pepper was reading, and hates himself that that wasn’t his absolute first thought when he saw the flames building, closing in on the living room at the front of the house.

“I’ll get her out and I’ll come back for you guys, okay?” Peter says, trying to keep his voice steady.

He wants to look Tony in the eyes, wants to pull his mask off to do it properly, but the second he tries, Tony shoots a hand out to tug Peter’s hand away from the mask. “Don’t you dare. Leave it, Pete. That’s the closest thing to a smoke mask that you’ve got right now.”

As Peter scales back down the side of the house, he has to trust that Tony and Morgan are safe enough for him to leave for now. The flames haven’t reached the bedrooms yet. Pepper needs him more.

The air gets warmer the closer he gets to the front of the house, and he’s moving as quickly as he can. Flames burn around the edges of the doorframe and Peter leans back to kick through the glass pane of the door with his foot, leaving a jagged opening big enough for him to haul himself through.

He can feel fire rising around him in the entry-way but he knows the suit will give him some sort of protection so he doesn’t even think twice before throwing himself through the burning heat.

Inside, the living room that he loves, where he’s spent so many early mornings and late evenings, everything in-between, is alight. Flames lick at the ceiling, burning the walls and furniture to an unrecognisable shade of charcoaled-black.

The Lego fairground that he and Morgan started building last week is slowly turning into a sad lump of multicoloured plastic, warped and bent from the heat. All the effort they put into it is entirely unrecognisable.

Pepper’s stack of gardening books is up in flames. Peter thinks his history textbook he left here might be among them.

He’s on the floor, _stop, drop and roll_ , echoing through his head like a stuck record. He can make out the couch ahead of him through the haze, covered in blackened ash from the ceiling.

He needs to get to Pepper. He needs to get to Pepper.

_Pepper, Pepper, Pepper._

Amongst the roaring of the flames, he can hear the smallest of gasps and ragged coughs from behind the couch and he moves as quickly as his heat-worn body will let him.

Pepper’s there. Behind the couch, pressed to the floor as close to the entry to the kitchen she could get. She was clearly hoping to be able to escape through the kitchen’s back door, but a ceiling beam has fallen since then, blocking the way.

She’s got the collar of her dressing gown pulled up around her mouth, shaking and sputtering slightly as she tried to stop herself from breathing in. As soon as he’s in rach, Peter pulls her as close to him as he can, running his eyes over her quickly. Her skin is dangerously red and shiny.

“Pete… P-Peter?” She’s looking up at him through glazed eyes.

“We gotta get out. I’m gonna get you out, okay?”

Keeping her pressed to him and trying to keep them as low to the ground as possible, he races for the way they came in. Nothing is going through his mind apart from the desperate need to get the both out, keep Pepper safe. Adrenaline courses through him and he kicks the front door down this time, too panicked to think about trying to maneuver them both out the way he came in.

They make it out. Smoke billows out behind them from the hole where the door had been.

 _They’re out_.

Peter’s legs feel like they’re ready to give way underneath him.

There are people in front of them, people Peter doesn’t recognise. They step towards them and Peter instinctively wants to step backwards, but the house is behind them and he doesn’t want them any closer than they already are, not after everything that’s just happened.

He hears sirens wailing somewhere further down the road, and that’s when he finally noticed the ambulances and three fire engines waiting in the driveway.

“Ambulance,” Peter breathes out desperately. He gives a hacking cough. “She needs an ambulance.”

Pepper’s whisked away from him, and suddenly everything around him feels too much without her grounding weight against him. He can hear the splashing of the hoses, water hissing as it comes into contact with the flames. Hurried voices. Radios clicking on and off. More sirens, somewhere far off. The creaking of metal. A reassuring voice. Muffled cries-

 _Tony. Morgan_ -

Are right there. Standing by an ambulance.

Someone got them out.

 _They all got out_.

* * *

Five minutes later, Tony’s in front of him. Peter might have forgotten how to breathe. They’re still at the lake house. The lake house is still burning. Pepper’s still in an ambulance. They’re waiting for a medic to finish giving her a once over before they’re taken to hospital, Peter thinks. At least, he’s pretty sure that’s what he heard someone say to Tony just before.

Maybe he was imagining it.

Nothing feels real.

“You did so good,” Tony breathes, and Peter leans into the comfort in his voice. “So good, Pete, I promise. How’re you feeling? You okay?”

 _Is_ he okay? He doesn’t know.

“I wanna… I don’t - can’t, not like this,” Peter isn’t even sure what he’s trying to say, but suddenly the charred suit feels suffocating and he wants it off. He doesn’t want to be Spider-Man right now. He isn’t strong enough to be Spider-Man right now. He just wants to be Morgan’s older brother, he wants to hold her hand and keep her close without people eyeing him like they don’t quite trust him. He wants to be Tony’s son, he wants to be able to lean against his shoulder and close his eyes and pretend for just even a second that everything is okay.

He wants to be Peter Parker.

Tony’s still focused on Peter’s face but he looks a little like Peter feels, like he’s a little bit gone behind the eyes and isn’t quite processing exactly what’s happening. But he knows what Peter needs. He always knows exactly what he needs, will let Peter lean into him even when he hasn’t got much left to give.

“Did you bring anything with you? You got anything in the car?” Tony probes gently, and Peter glances over to where his car is now obscured behind two fire trucks. He nods numbly.

“I’ll grab it for you, okay?”

Peter nods again. He waits, eyes trained down on the gravel, unable to bear looking anywhere else until Tony’s bare feet appear in front of him, Peter’s overnight bag over one arm, Morgan still in the other. He doesn’t know how long the man’s been gone.

“C’mon,” Tony mutters, arm cast around Peter’s shoulder to guide him towards the empty ambulance. The one that Pepper isn’t in. She’s only in one in the first place though because Peter didn’t get to her fast enough. Maybe he deserves to be in a hospital bed as well. It doesn’t seem fair that he’s still walking.

“I’ll wait out here,” Tony promises, giving Peter a gentle push up. He can feel eyes on him as Spider-Man disappears into the empty ambulance, Tony Stark standing guard outside, and after a minute or so Peter Parker appears, slumped into worn jeans and a Midtown hoodie.

Once upon a time, Tony would have been drawing up NDA’s the second Peter stepped out of the back of that ambulance, but everyone knows who he is now, after Beck, after everything, so he just keeps his eyes down.

Tony wraps his arms around him in a full-body hug the second he reappears, Morgan squashed between them. Peter buries his nose into Morgan’s hair and squeezes his eyes closed. Morgan’s hair smells of smoke.

There’s no escaping this.

* * *

Peter’s always hated hospital waiting rooms, but that sort of seems like a stupid statement. He’s not sure that _anyone_ likes hospital waiting rooms.

He isn’t sure how he got here, slumped down into the uncomfortable blue plastic chair. Nurses bustle in and out, and an illuminated ‘Emergency Room’ sign flickers in the corners of his vision.

He doesn’t remember leaving the lake house, or what’s left of it, not really. He can conjure up vague images. Orange embers covering the ground. Medics milling around, saying things that Peter can’t remember. Pepper shielded in the back of an ambulance. All of them being ushered into the same one. Tony bent over the gurney and a semi-conscious Pepper, pitched forward so his forehead was pressed into her shoulder. The squealing sirens and screeching tyres. Morgan’s raspy coughing. The way the line of Tony’s shoulders shook; whether it was from the speed of the ambulance travelling down the freeway or tears, he might never know. Red, burnt skin. The sound of Tony’s rapidly beating heart thudding through Peter’s ears. The ever suffocating smell of smoke. Someone sticking some sort of tube down his throat. He thinks it was to check for smoke inhalation. Morgan’s timid whimpers ratcheting up into wails when they tried to do the same to her.

 _Focus_.

_Get out of your head._

_People need you._

He tries to centre himself in the room. Morgan’s in his lap right now. She’s unnaturally quiet. Someone must have given her a shock blanket at some point, because the material is kind of scratchy and Peter can feel it brushing against his hand, somewhere just out of reach.

 _Focus_.

Tony needs him. Morgan needs him. His attachment to the world around him is still circling in his vague periphery and he tries to grasp onto it.

Tony paces. Back and forth, back and forth. He’s got a pair of thin socks pulled over his bare feet now. Someone gave all three of them a pair when they arrived sans shoes - they hadn’t exactly had time to pop back inside and grab a pair before they left.

Peter’s pretty sure Tony hasn’t sat down since Pepper was admitted. A doctor came out, a while ago, and Peter heard the words _second-degree burns, acute inhalation injury, carbon monoxide poisoning_ passed around in a way that made him feel sick, and clearly pushed Tony slightly closer to the edge. He’s got his left wrist pulled up towards him, cradled in the prosthetic of his right hand.

Peter rubs a hand up and down Morgan’s back when he hears her let out a weak cough against his chest. Tony still doesn’t look over. He’s entranced, eyes fixated on the door they’ve got Pepper behind.

God, the two of them are a pair and they really can’t afford to be right now.

“I - uh, this would probably be a really bad time to tell you that someone tried to break into the house tonight and he’s webbed up in the trees behind the house right now, wouldn’t it?” Peter blurts out suddenly. It’s _definitely_ a bad time. He knows this. He’d almost forgotten about the whole ordeal in the lingering haze of the panic and uncertainty.

He thinks that maybe, more than anything, he says it just to get Tony to look over at him and Morgan rather than the hospital room door.

Peter gets what he wants - kind of.

Tony’s head whips around to stare at Peter. He doesn’t say anything for a few long seconds, as if his mind is racing to catch up with his ears. “What? You didn’t think to mention this before, _why_? Did he have anything to do with the fire?”

Peter draws back a little at the sharp tone, and he can see the regret sweep across Tony’s face as soon as the words leave his mouth. “Hey, no, I’m sorry, that was-”

“No, it’s okay. I, uh, I was trying to fix my - y’know,” Peter lowers his voice, “the suit, out in the garage.” Tony nods for him to continue. “FRIDAY let me know there was someone hanging about and he was just snooping around the outside. I thought he was a reporter at first, but he wasn't going away. I went out there and took care of it, I promise, and I watched him the whole time. I didn’t even notice the fire until I was on my way back, and by then I was too - it was, um…” Peter trails off, staring helplessly at the closed door they’re treating Pepper behind. “Yeah.”

Tony brings a hand up to scratches the back of his neck, and as he does, Peter notices he’s still shaking. “Okay… Okay. I’ll take care of it," he says, voice detached. Peter wonders how much of what he's just told him he's actually processed. "Did Karen get hold of the police?”

Peter’s eyes flick down to the bag sitting at his feet. The Spider-Man suit is inside, and he’s sure right now definitely isn’t the right time to divulge to Tony that Karen wasn’t exactly functional because of his attempts at patching up the suit on his own after being stabbed.

He shakes his head. “I was going to get her to when I got back up towards the house and then everything was… um, everything was…” Peter trails off. He can’t finish. _Everything was on fire_.

Tony understands. Of course he does.

“I need to have a chat with FRI at some point if her servers weren’t too damaged. I’ll get her to send someone out at the same time,” Tony says, pausing for a second. He glances down towards the floor. “Even if he got away, it’s not like there’s much left for him to get his hands on.”

He laughs stiffly. If it’s meant to be a joke, it falls flat.

Tony continues to pace. Morgan’s now asleep in Peter’s lap, and he kind of wishes he could join her.

He doesn’t though.

He doesn’t want to find out how today will haunt his dreams.

* * *

They’re let into Pepper’s room at four in the morning.

Peter has to stop to take a moment at the sight of the woman he’s always known as always moving, always on the go, always _doing_ , unconscious in a sterile hospital room. The angry red of her skin stands out against the unnaturally white sheets.

The doctors told them that she probably wouldn’t be awake for a few hours, but that doesn’t stop Morgan from promptly crawling on the bed to occupy the space pressed right up against her mother’s hip bone. She wraps her hand around two of Pepper’s fingers and falls asleep.

* * *

At four-thirty, Tony breaks the silence. So far, he’s been doing nothing but clutching Pepper’s other hand, the one that Morgan isn’t hanging onto and staring at her with a tired sort of anguish settled behind his eyes.

“Hey, Pete?”

Peter turns himself slightly in his seat - which is _significantly_ comfier than the ones out in the waiting room - to face Tony. “Mmm?”

“I’m gonna duck out for a minute. You okay with that?”

“Yeah, course,” he says. He doesn’t blame Tony for needing a minute outside of this little room. He’ll do that himself, once it’s a reasonable hour. He knows he needs to call May - she’ll go crazy with worry if she hears about it on the news rather than from him, but he’s hesitant to wake her up before she needs to. He knows she’s been working ridiculous hours lately. “Everything okay?”

Tony’s shoulders lift in the smallest shrug. He huffs out a laugh, face twitching slightly as if he’s trying to decide whether to let himself be vulnerable or not. Peter knows that look like the back of his hand. “Could be better,” he settles on, eventually. “Could definitely be better. I’m just gonna get in contact with the fire department, see how much information I can get out of FRIDAY as well. Y’know, do something useful.”

Peter nods. Tony’s always been a fixer. It took him a while to learn how to sit there and just listen when Peter came to him with problems, rather than trying to find a solution right away. He’s gotten better at it now, but the deep-rooted need inside of him to take care of his family will never leave.

He gets up from the chair next to Peter’s with a low groan under his breath and presses a kiss to Peter’s forehead before he goes.

* * *

At five, Peter’s still awake. School yesterday and his final seems like years ago, but with Tony gone, Peter feels some sort of weird need to just stay up and watch over Pepper and Morgan.

He knows that Pepper would tell him that they don’t need worrying about, and to just try and sleep, if she knew - if she was awake. But she doesn’t, and she’s not. He keeps his eyes open for a little while longer and watches both of them breathe.

At six am, the first sign of the sun appears above the horizon. Peter finally drifts.

* * *

“That’s really what FRIDAY said?”

“Mhm,” someone hums in affirmation, “the fire chief told me it seems like the most likely scenario if we look at where the fire started.”

“You can’t tell him that, Tony,” a voice says.

“I’m not planning on it, trust me, _fuck_ , that would be-”

“Mind your language, we’ve got little ears around,” someone scolds, but it’s soft, warm and Peter pushes through the drowsy state he’s drifting in to recognise the tone as Pepper’s.

 _Pepper_.

Peter’s eyes feel gritty and heavy and when he tries to force them open and he drags a hand up from his lap, balling it into a loose fist to scrub at them. The voices quieten.

“Pepper? S’that you?”

“Hey, honey. How are you doing?”

Peter blinks a little and the room comes back into focus around him. Morgan is still fast asleep, but Pepper is sitting up now. She doesn’t look a whole lot better than a few hours ago, but her eyes are open and she’s watching Peter carefully, concern written all over her face.

Peter sits up straighter, does his best to look better than he feels.

“I’m good, yeah,” he says, but he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than anything. He looks to Tony, who’s moved his chair as close to the side of Pepper’s bed as he can get it. Peter thinks he’d probably be up there with her if Morgan wasn’t. “Did y’get through to FRIDAY?” Peter asks, words still slurring together a little from tiredness.

“Yeah, I did and it’s all sorted out now, okay? Nothing to worry about,” Tony says, reaching over to push a gentle hand into Peter’s hair and scratch at the scalp slowly. Peter’s eyes flutter closed for a second, relishing in the touch, but he mulls over Tony’s words at the same.

“What does that mean?” Peter asks. He doesn’t miss the way Pepper shoots Tony a look of slight unease at his question and the anxiety building in the pit of his stomach flares up a little more.

Something’s wrong.

“What does what mean?”

“What do you mean, it’s all sorted out? What happened? Do they know-”

“It’s not important, bud. I spoke with the fire department and they dealt with it. They think they’ll be able to salvage things from a few of the rooms upstairs. We’re okay, that’s what’s important. We don’t need to focus on what happened. All we have to worry about now is resting up and feeling better.” Tony’s voice sounds consoling for reasons Peter can’t quite figure out.

He narrows his eyes as Tony shifts ever so slightly in his chair. He looks _uncomfortable_. Pepper averts her eyes away to focus in on Morgan, stroking a few pieces of hair out of her face as she continues to sleep, oblivious to whatever this is that’s unfolding.

“Guys, what’s going on?”

“Peter, everything is fine,” Tony says firmly, “I think you just need a bit more rest and then-”

“No.” Peter lowers his voice, and it shakes a little. “ _Tony_. Tell me what happened.”

“Pete-”

“I need to know. I _know_ there’s something going on. I’m not a kid.”

Tony looks like he wants to argue, but then his face just falls a little and he sighs. It sounds burdened, apprehensive. Suddenly, Peter isn’t sure whether he actually wants to hear what’s about to come out of his mouth.

“The fire. When I spoke to FRIDAY, she said she couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it came from, so it could have been lots of things, faulty wiring, the works. But she said there was a soldering iron left on. That was her best guess” Tony says and oh _god_ -

Everything comes flooding back in painful flashes, all the equipment he’d been using to try and repair his suit, the wiring he’d been soldering together when he heard the footsteps outside. The soldering iron that in his rushed panic, he’d put down _without turning off_.

Suddenly the guilt Peter was feeling because he didn’t get to Pepper fast enough is completely swamped. He didn’t just not get there fast enough. He _started it_. He knows he did. He feels sick, nausea rising violently within him.

Tony continues, choosing his words slowly and carefully. “FRIDAY can’t quite be sure though, her cameras were compromised with the smoke eventually, and the fire chief said there were lots of other things that could have potentially-”

“In the garage, right?” Peter asks, quietly. “The soldering iron. It was in the garage?”

Peter doesn’t need to say that he was the last one in the garage, or even imply it. He feels frozen, and looking at Tony, he _knows_ they both know it.

Tony sucks in a breath. He’s got a pained, pinched expression on his face, as though he’s having a physical reaction to the words leaving his mouth. “Yeah, Pete. The garage.”

He feels like all the life has been sucked out of his chest and been replaced with a chasm, culpability and remorse swallowing him whole.

His eyes flicker over to Pepper, burnt and blistered, propped up in bed with an IV line running down her arm.

 _His fault. His fault. He started the fire, and now, for a second time today, he has to watch everything he loves catch fire, crumble and burn around him_.

Peter thinks Tony might still be speaking to him. He rips his eyes away from his lap to find Pepper reaching out for him, curling her fingers around his wrist gently. “ _Peter_ ,” she whispers. Her voice is soft but filled with the same sort of pain that Tony’s was inflicted with. “Honey. None of this is your fault. Please don’t think that. Don’t you dare do that to yourself.”

Peter can’t look at her. He put her here. What if he hadn’t gotten back in time? What if he’d spent too long being frivolous with webbing the guy up, trying to make a show out of it, to prove to him how stupid it had been to try and even set foot on the Starks' property in the first place, while everything he loved burned to a crisp only a hundred yards behind him.

“I’ve gotta go,” Peter gasps out, lurching forward out of his chair without even looking at Tony or Pepper. He can’t. He doesn’t deserve to.

There’s a sudden rise in the voices behind him as he bolts for the door of the room, throwing it open desperately.

He thinks they might be calling after him, and there’s a metallic screech as if a chair is scraping against the linoleum, someone getting up far too quickly, but Peter doesn’t turn back. He can’t. He needs to be as far away from them as possible. He put them in danger.

 _They_ need _him_ to be as far away as possible.

* * *

The hallways all blur into ones as he runs, the acrid smell of chemicals burning his nostrils and his lungs heaving from the exertion but he doesn’t stop.

He can’t stop.

His panic is wrapping around him, clogging his lungs like thick, black smoke. He can’t breathe. He wishes he could remember what it was like to breathe easily.

He needs fresh air.

Which way were they brought in? He can’t remember. He doesn’t even know what hospital they’re in. He passes signs, pointing him on his way to the coronary care unit, to the surgical ward, to intensive care but he doesn’t want any of that. He wants _air_. He can’t breathe.

Why can’t he breathe?

Somehow, after what feels like hours of winding through corridors and dodging concerned looking doctors and nurses who try to pull him aside, ask him _if he’s okay_ , _if he should be here_ , _where he’s come from_ , he finds the lobby. His eyes zero in on the double doors. He can get out of here. But then there’s a familiar voice - one he’s known his whole life, like a life-raft in his sea of confusion and hurt and self-hatred.

He whips his head around wildly, eyes scanning the room full of people, all of the worried, anxious, bored and tear-stained faces until he finds who he’s looking for.

 _May_.

He never got around to calling her.

He forgot and then he’d fallen asleep, but she’s here anyway. Happy’s next to her and they’re talking to a receptionist. Both of them look like they’ve just rolled out of bed, May’s hair thrown up in a bun, glasses on and Peter thinks the shoes Happy’s wearing might be slippers but he can’t see through the blur of tears and he doesn’t care all that much.

All he cares about is getting out of here, far away from the Starks’ so he can’t burden them with his bad luck and irresponsibility any more.

He takes a few fragile steps closer to May and Happy.

He doesn’t want to hurt them either. But he needs someone to take him home.

He needs May.

“May,” Peter gasps out when he’s only a few feet behind them. He’s breathless. Desperation and grief bleed from his words.

May turns on the spot at the sound of his voice, and her eyes widen with almost unimaginable relief at the sight of her nephew standing in front of her, panting and shaky but standing all the same.

“Peter,” she breathes, and a choked noise just slips from Peter’s throat in response. He tries to force it down; he doesn’t want to cry, not here. “Sweetheart, what’s going on?”

He doesn’t think he can tell her.

How do you tell your Aunt that you’re solely responsible for so much damage and destruction? He can’t. He knows she’ll find out soon, and he knows that when she does, she won’t want him anywhere near her. He’s dangerous.

So he steps forward to let her wrap him in her arms, selfishly stealing shreds of comfort ( _that he knows he doesn’t deserve_ ) before they get stolen away from him by his own mistakes.

May’s concern radiates off her and Peter can see her glancing at Happy, eyes wide and concerned over the top of his head but he doesn’t care. “Peter? What’s going on. Where’s Pepper? Tony rang, he told us what happened. Can you take us to them, do you think you can do that?”

“No!” Peter bursts, voice stronger than he intended and May pushes him back gently, hands still on his shoulders to hold him at arm's length. She studies his face carefully and he crumples under the weight of her stare.

“I c-can’t, I can’t do this. I can’t be here. I need to go home.”

“We can’t, not yet, kid,” Happy speaks up for the first time and Peter determinedly avoids his eyes. “Tony said they don’t think Pepper will be discharged for a few days, and I doubt Tony will be going anywhere until then. Plus, from what I’ve heard, I think the lake house might be out of action for a little while,” Happy finishes reluctantly, voice tapering off towards the end and Peter screws his eyes closed to try and trap the rapidly forming tears.

That’s _not_ what he wanted to hear.

“No, I don’t - I-I don’t mean, not there. I can’t go with… not back, not with them. I’ll just - I’ll… I can’t.”

“I don’t know what you need. I need you to talk to me,” May says gently. Peter knows he’s being unintelligible, but he just wants her to get the message. He _needs_ her to understand.

“I need to leave,” Peter blurted, and May nods slowly.

“Okay. Okay, we can do that,” she placates calmly without a second thought, glancing over to Happy. “I’ll take him out to the car and we’ll wait for you. Go and see Pepper.”

Happy nods after one more glance at Peter, who curls further into May to try and avoid being seen. He doesn’t want people to see him for who he really is. Dangerous. Cursed to the core. “I just need to check on everyone. Make sure Morgan’s okay. I’ll see you guys out there,” he says, reaching out to give Peter a pat on the back before he disappears down the corridor that Peter came from.

“Let's get out of here then,” May tells him, and Peter shudders with full-body relief as May keeps a strong and steady arm tucked around him, guiding him from the building.

In the parking lot, air that doesn’t smell stale and synthetic surrounds them and he tries to gulp it into his lungs but his throat is still closed up.

He’s choking on the weight of his failures, but he selfishly does his best not to think about it as May tucks him into the backseat of Happy’s car before climbing in beside him.

She pulls him close to her again and lets him fall into her hold like it’s the only thing keeping him afloat.

Half an hour later, the door to the front seat opens and Happy climbs in, his face pinched and serious. He’s holding Peter’s overnight bag, the one containing his ruined Spider-Man suit, that he must have left in the hospital room.

Happy leans over to put it on the floor of the passenger side before turning in his seat to face Peter and May. Peter holds his breath, waits for Happy to chew him out, to berate him for being so foolish and stupid because he’s never known Happy to be anything but crazy protective over the Starks’ but he doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just leans over to squeeze Peter’s shoulder kindly.

“I’m glad you’re okay, kid.”

Peter doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. He just buries his head back into May’s shoulder and cries.

* * *

He doesn’t speak to anyone for a week.

He figured out after the first day that Happy must have told May what happened because when she looks at him now it’s _different_.

Maybe it’s pity or something close to sadness, but he can’t quite comprehend why. Anger or disappointment he could make sense of. Everything else just makes his head spin.

So he’s shut himself away; self-imposed solitary confinement. He doesn’t want to see anyone. He doesn’t want anyone to have to see _him_.

Guilt lurks inside of him, and when he lies in bed and closes his eyes, he can see flames licking at the ceiling, smoke filling the small room. Sometimes he opens his eyes and all he sees is the chipped cream ceilings and he’s almost disappointed. It wouldn’t be like he doesn’t deserve it.

May and Happy must call Tony around a few times, because Peter hears him, outside his bedroom door. He never tries to come in. He just talks instead, about how his day’s been, about how much Morgan misses him, the fact that they’re staying in the city, back in the tower, for a few months, how Pepper would really love his opinion on the new bedspread they’ve picked out for his room in the tower because she’d decided the old one had faded too much in the sun.

Peter never replies to any of this. He doesn’t know how.

He doesn’t deserve the comfort of talking to Tony, anyway.

On what must be the seventh or eighth day of Peter’s voluntary isolation, they send Pepper herself. Surely she can’t have come on her own accord. Peter _hurt_ her.

He hurt all of them, but he guesses Tony might always have some sort of misguided sense of responsibility for him. He needs to let that go, though. All Peter’s done is threaten the family he works so hard to protect, put them all in danger.

The second he hears Pepper’s voice outside his door, all hell breaks loose in his head.

They can’t let her get that close to him. He’ll hurt her again.

He can’t even make out her words, and he feels pathetic for making such a scene but suddenly all he can see is the decimated living room at the lake house, Pepper curled up on the floor in the middle of the burning room, flames towering above her. He’s there again, the smoke in his throat and the heat of the flames toying with his skin. He’s vulnerable this time, he doesn't have the suit, but neither did Pepper and that’s why she was hurt.

Peter knows he’s panicking, he can feel himself being dragged under, can vaguely register the ugly gasping sounds that are coming from his throat, but he can’t help it, there’s smoke, so much smoke, and he _can’t breathe_ , he can’t-

The door bursts open and May is at his side. She’s not burning.

She pulls him close to her just like she’d done that morning in the hospital parking lot - the closest he’s been to her since then - and she’s cool to the touch.

In his periphery, he can see Pepper standing in the doorway, Tony hovering somewhere behind her. She has tears in her eyes, and Peter hates that he’s managed to go and hurt her twice now.

 _Three strikes, you’re out_.

Peter doesn’t hear Tony outside his door again after that, and definitely not Pepper.

He tells himself this is good. The further away they are from him, the less likely they are to get hurt. He lies awake at night and tries to ignore the crushing weight of loneliness but when it comes to consume him, he lets it.

At least that means he’s feeling something.

(He just wishes that once, just once in his life, he could feel like he belonged somewhere without inflicting the darkness settled deep inside of him on everyone he loves.)

* * *

“ _Attention, attention, Engine Thirty-One and Engine Thirty-Four, respond to 615 Elliot Ave. Flames have been reported. The building is occupied.”_

_“Units are responding to Elliot Ave. There are visible flames.”_

_“Are you on the scene?”_

_“Engine Thirty-One is on the scene. We’ve got heavy fire on the front of the building. What level it originated from is unclear. Victims are trapped on the eighth floor.”_

Peter sets the crackling radio down on the bed.

He put it together from scraps years ago, before he knew Tony, before he had Karen to help him get in the backdoor to the NYPD radio communications. That’s not what he’s been using it for over the last few days though. It took him hours of fiddling and finicking with the dials and different channels until he managed to get through to the fire department dispatch radio. It’s all paying off now though.

He pauses for a second, triple checking that he can hear the sound of Happy’s snores down the hallway before he clambers out onto the fire escape and closes his window behind him.

He slings a web across to the next building and launches himself off in the direction of Elliot Ave.

The suit is still fairly (read, _extremely_ ) compromised after the events of both the knife-wielding robber conflict and then the fire.

Karen’s completely non-existent, Peter never got the chance to reinstall her before everything went to shit, and the fabric is torn and charred in places (even after his shoddy repair attempts with May’s sewing kit in the dark of the night a few days ago). It makes the aerodynamics less than ideal and sometimes he wavers a little bit as he webs through New York but he makes it work. He doesn’t have a choice.

He even manages to make it all the way to Elliot Ave only using the mental images he tried to burn into his mind from Google Maps before he left. Tony always told him it was a wonder he made it _anywhere_ in New York with his sense of direction. For a brief second, he wonders whether Tony would still be awake, whether he should text him to tell him, but then he remembers _everything_ and he snaps himself out of it just in time to drop down on the pavement outside the blazing apartment building only five minutes after he left Queens.

He leaves that night with a blistering burn to the arm and more singes to the suit but maybe he’s finally taken a tiny step down the road with no end - the road to redeeming himself.

* * *

_“Status, Engine Nine. Are you en route?”_

_“Affirmative. Engine Fifteen is already on the scene. They are reporting thick smoke. Likely a smouldering fire.”_

_“Is there anyone inside the building?”_

_“A resident’s cat is missing. It’s been located on the second floor, but the entrances are blocked by-”_

Peter doesn’t need to hear anymore. His arm still isn’t healed from yesterday but he pulls on his suit anyway. He wrapped the burn, sort of, it should be able to withstand a little bit more heat.

He jumps from the roof and lets himself fall for a few seconds before he catches himself.

* * *

Tony was back at his door today, for the first time in a while. He spent half an hour outside, telling Peter he knows all about what he’s doing with the house fires around New York.

He asks Peter to stop, to make sure he’s taking care of himself but his voice sounds resigned as if he knows exactly why Peter is doing this - and that his words will be useless. He can’t know, though.

Peter’s sure there’s no way Tony could ever understand the guilt that’s drowning him.

Peter doesn’t listen. He doesn’t stop.

* * *

_“There’s reports of a blaze on 92nd. Do we have any engines nearby?”_

_“Affirmative. We can be on the scene in two minutes.”_

_“Okay. You have three engines coming to back you up. Medics have been notified.”_

Peter’s back is burnt and pain shoots through him whenever he moves. It was enough to make May suspicious when he actually appeared from his bedroom this morning, even if it was only to rummage through the horrifically messy bathroom cabinet for the aloe vera. His suit is singed. None of this matters though, and he maps out a route towards 92nd Street in his head.

He swings into the darkness.

* * *

A few nights later, Peter’s panting as he sits on the edge of a building, watching firefighters putting out the last of the fire Peter just rescued a beloved chihuahua _and_ a grateful couple’s wedding album from twenty minutes ago.

He’s about to head home and call it a night. It’s a bit lonely anyway, without Karen to talk to, and his entire being is aching. His healing has been a little slow off the mark lately, but all he probably needs is a good few hours sleep to get it back up and running.

But then there are sirens somewhere on the street below him, the red flashing lights illuminating the brick buildings of the street. Peter doesn’t particularly want to come face to face with another fire tonight, but the deep urge to _make things right_ , to _do better_ rears up inside of him and against all of his better instincts, Peter throws himself off the side of the building without really thinking about it.

Maybe that’s why tonight of all nights goes horribly, _horribly_ wrong.

The pavement outside the apartment building is packed with firefighters, medics and civilians when Peter arrives. There are a few scared-looking children huddling under shock blankets that are far too similar to the one they’d given Morgan when they first arrived at the hospital, and Peter tears his eyes away before he can lose himself too deeply in that night.

Their gazes are all fixated on a point somewhere up in the building, clearly looking for something other than the flames that pour from the windows. Peter just hopes he can find who they’re clearly so sorely missing.

Peter weaves his way through the crowd, keeping his head down as if that would do anything to stop the bright red Spider-Man suit from being a beacon of interest. Hushed whispers surround him, but he zeroes in on the tense exchanges between the fire crew on the front line.

“ _A woman_ … _their mother_ … _fifth floor_ … _no, the windows on the east side of the building are compromised_ … _that’s not feasible_.”

He glances upwards towards the fifth floor once he reaches the foot of the building, but there’s a hand on his shoulder to find a firefighter looking down at him. There’s a smear of soot across his face, but he’s clearly more focused on Peter’s clearly fire-torn suit.

“Spider-Man? This is a job for the fire department, son, we’ve got a handle on it. I know you’ve been trying to help out a bit recently, but why don’t you go home?”

Peter shakes his head. He can’t. Not without helping.

“Let me, sir, please. I can get the woman out, and I’ll leave you to it, I promise!” Peter has to yell the last few words over his shoulder as he webs his way up to the fifth floor, not waiting for a reply. He has to do his.

The window frames are burning, what once maybe used to be wood now splintering with the heat of the flames. Peter throws himself through one without thinking about it, feeling the searing heat brush up against his exposed arm, where he clearly hadn’t done a good enough job of stitching up the suit. He grits his teeth and steadies himself as he lands on his feet.

He’s got super-healing, what’s a bit of charred skin versus that?

Nothing, he tells himself, absolutely nothing at all.

He ducks and weaves his way through the furniture, some blackened and some alight, trying to keep his mind firmly centred in the task at hand.

There’s a woman pressed into the corner, drifting in and out of consciousness. She’s got blonde hair, covered in ash. It’s all Peter can do to not think of Pepper as he drags her close to him and keeps them as low to the ground as possible.

_History is repeating itself. History is repeating itself._

He’s nearly back at the exit. He can see it through the haze of thick black smoke and he grits his teeth, tugging them both towards the window frame. It looks like it’s beginning to cave under the weight of the flames, but he keeps going, keeps moving towards their way out. He can do this. He needs to do this.

They make it. He helps the woman out the window first, where fire crews are waiting with ladders to help them down.

Peter swings a leg over, pulling himself through the gap and-

 _Pain_.

The window frame finally splinters under the weight and cracks, the burning wood landing across the top of Peter’s back. He can’t think, can’t breathe. There’s a guttural yell of agony somewhere, and he thinks maybe it’s him. Roaring red hot pain consumes his entire being. The blood in his veins is alight, nerve endings screaming.

It’s all he can do to cling onto the grip he has on the woman until a firefighter has transferred her fully out of his hold, down to safety.

There’s someone else there, offering Peter a hand, but he just shoots a web out to the side of the building blindly, trying his best to push through the pain.

He did it. She’s okay.

As Peter’s got both shaky feet on the ground, trying his best not to double over in pain, a man rushes over to him that Peter hadn’t noticed before. The flock of small children try to follow but they’re held back by a medic, and even with his vision caving in at the edges from the pain, when Peter finally gets a good look at the woman’s face in the golden street-lights rather than the burning glow of the fire, he understands why. The sight of the charred flesh is enough to give anyone nightmares.

“Thank you,” the man breathes out breathlessly from where he’s slumped on the pavement next to who Peter suspects must be his wife, judging by the ring on his finger and the way he brushes a thumb over the matching one on the woman’s finger. “You’re a good man, Spider-Man.”

No, he’s not.

No matter what he tries to convince himself of, he knows, deep down that he’s doing this to atone for his sins, to alleviate just a fraction of the grief and guilt resting on his shoulders, poisoning his mind.

He’s not good. There isn’t an ounce of good in his body.

He’s not a good man. He’s a guilty one.

He just nods at the man, before he turns and stumbles away, suddenly all too aware of the throbbing pain rushing through him. He’s stuck in a terrible nightmarish-fever dream. Every part of him feels like he’s been set alight. He _burns_. The flames are gone confined in the building but Peter can still feel them, towering over him and scorching his skin from his bones.

He can’t see straight. He can’t think straight.

There are too many things happening as the world starts to spin tumultuously around him. His eyes fixate briefly on a familiar car pulled up to the curb but then they’re torn away by the wailing sirens of more medics arriving, red and white flashes of light dancing across his vision. People are crowding around him. He thinks he hears someone ask if he’s okay, but then a hand reaches out for him and he tries to bat it away, hissing in pain at the movement in his arm.

There’s another voice somewhere in the sea of chaos and confusion and _pain_ but this one doesn’t alarm Peter quite as much as the other one did.

“Get away from him, just back _off_.”

Then there’s someone right in front of him and they’re trying to touch him, hand gripping one of his shoulders - the uninjured one, he notes hazily in the back of his mind. He squirms away, even though the touch feels familiar. He doesn’t want anyone seeing him right now.

“What the hell are you doing, Peter?”

Peter blinks a few times. His eyes sting but his vision clears ever so slightly and suddenly when he looks up, Tony’s staring back at him, expression set stonily, something too close to concern in his eyes. An irrational bout of anger floods through Peter to join the panic stuttering in his chest. He can handle himself. He doesn’t need this right now; he’s been doing this all week. He’s _fine_.

Peter clenches his jaw and looks away determinedly. He’ll heal - maybe a little slowly, but leaps and bounds better than anyone else. He doesn’t know _why_ or _how_ Tony is even here. He should be with his injured wife. His probably traumatised daughter who’s just lost her home. Nothing makes any sense.

“It’s n-nothing,” he huffs out, trying to catch his breath around rattled gasps, “I - I’m okay.”

The pain is escalating, radiating through every inch of his body and it’s getting harder to stay on his feet, but he’s not going to give anyone the pleasure of seeing him cave.

“We’ve gotta get you looked at,” Tony’s saying. His mouth doesn’t look like it’s matching up with his words through Peter’s disjointed vision, but he gets the idea well enough. He pulls back.

“No, _piss off_ , Tony. I’m fine,” Peter repeats, spitting the words out with as much of the energy he can muster. Why can’t everyone just accept that he really _is_ fine, that this is just something he needs to do?”

Tony just stares at him, and Peter almost feels a stab of remorse for his words until Tony sets his mouth into a tight line and gives up on reasoning with him, instead just trying to guide him back towards the car Peter had noticed parked on the curb earlier.

Peter jerks away. He can’t go anywhere with Tony. He’ll hurt him. He just needs to find a quiet spot to nurse his wounds for a few hours and he’ll be fine.

He wants to web away, wants nothing more than to be out of this situation, but his arm feels numb at his side and he can barely get his fingers to cooperate.

He needs to _get out of here_.

He stumbles back out of Tony’s grip and ignores the flare of pain as he scrambles away on unsteady legs into the dark alleyway. It’s only a few yards behind him, but his legs feel like they’re about to give way under the sheer weight of the agony that’s dragging him down further and further into oblivion.

He drops to his knees as soon as he’s sure he’s out of view, the dark walls of the alleyway sheltering him from either side. The cool, damp air provides the slightest of respite to his skin, but that doesn’t mean much as he’s dragging in heaving breaths, everything disjointed around him and tinted red from the pain.

Nausea roils and rising up within him. He reaches up to tug away his mask with clumsy hands, desperate to have it off his head. It gets stuck half-way for a second and Peter panics, darkness consuming what little vision he did have, but the hands are there again, guiding the offending material from his face.

Tony’s back, Peter vaguely registers, when the hands retreat and instead a figure crouches down next to him to shield him from view.

He can't decide whether he wants to curse out Tony again or lean into him just to satisfy the need for intrinsic comfort that’s rising up after having shoved it deep down inside of himself for two weeks. However, all of that’s quickly pushed to the side when he can finally suck in a long breath of air without the mask shielding his face and it promptly all comes back up, nausea getting the better of him as he vomits onto the concrete in front of him.

His throat burns with acidity, but there’s nothing to come up but black bile.

There’s a hand on his lower back, where the fabric isn’t ripped and torn, where the skin isn’t blistering. “You’re okay, buddy. You’re okay.”

How he can say that? How _anything_ can be okay anymore? How it can ever be okay ever again?

“I’m serious, Peter. We have to get you looked at,” Tony presses, voice still firm but laced with the sort of fondness that’s so paternal-sounding in nature that it shocks Peter back a little.

_He hurt Tony. He burnt down his house._

_There’s no tiny part inside of Peter that deserves fondness._

_He’ll never be a good man. He’s still just a guilty one._

Peter thinks he groans out something unintelligible and before Tony can help him up from his position pathetically keeled over the dirty pavement, the searing pain finally wins it’s battle and darkness swallows him.

* * *

Peter feels disconnected from his body.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels like something is missing - like he’s meant to be in pain, it's there somewhere but everything feels distant. Like he can’t remember how to feel it.

He drifts in the state for a while. He feels like he’s reaching for something he can never quite grasp.

Then, after a while of him floating around in his own empty head, he can _feel_.

It’s cold.

There’s something on his upper back. Cold, cold, cold. _Freezing_. He wants it off, now, but when he tries to lift his arm to tug at it, his body won’t cooperate and the offending limb falls back to his side uselessly.

He settles for the next best option of whining groggily into his pillow.

(He’s too out of it to remember that only a few hours ago he wouldn’t have wished for anything more than to live in this feeling, such a pure _cold_.)

There’s shuffling and movement next to him. He can register that now. The noise grates against his raw senses a little.

“You ready to come back to us, bud?”

 _Tony_?

He groans again.

“Yeah, yeah, we get it. You’re on the good stuff. No need to rub it in.”

 _Definitely Tony_.

Peter blinks his stinging eyes open and turns his head with what feels like a tremendous effort and he turns his head to stare at the man sitting next to his bed. He recognises the hoodie he has on. It's the one that Peter steals sometimes but isn’t actually allowed to keep because he thinks it might have been Rhodey’s once upon a time, so Tony likes to keep it around. 

“T... T’ny?”

“Hope you had a nice nap, kiddo,” he says softly. “Y’know, I was just thinking recently that we should do this again. I was starting to miss it - you and me in the medbay at some ridiculous hour of the night. It’s been a while, huh?”

Peter stays quiet. He doesn’t know what to say.

Tony doesn't force it, just reaches out and takes Peter’s hand cautiously like he’s afraid he might pull away. Peter feels like he _should_ pull away. Why? It’s comforting and he likes it. It feels like home, such an abstract concept when one of the places he once called home is now largely charred.

Oh yeah-

The intruder. The fire. Pepper in a hospital bed. Tony outside his bedroom door. The fire department dispatch calls coming through his crackling radio. The cat. 92nd Street. The chihuahua and the wedding album. The woman and her family on Elliot Ave. The burning window frame searing his back. Pain. _So much pain_.

_I’ll hurt him. I’ll hurt him. I’ll hurt him._

Peter wrenches his hand out of Tony’s loose grip with all the strength he can muster and brings it back to cradle it against his chest. Hurt twists on Tony’s face but he’s trying his best to hide it, Peter can tell.

He doesn’t want to see that look, so he lets his eyes slip closed again. He’s still exhausted.

He wants to fall back into the state where he can just drift and not have to think about anything or be a burden to _anyone_.

“We’re gonna talk in the morning - that’s a promise. I’m only letting you out of it now because you’re as high as a goddamn kite,” Tony chuckles, but it sounds mournful. Peter still doesn’t open his eyes. “I just need you to know one thing before you check back into dreamland again. Nothing that's happened over the last few weeks is your fault, Peter Benjamin Parker."

Tony pauses. A hand tentatively brushes a stray strand of Peter's hair from his forehead.

"We missed you, buddy, and we love you so much.”

* * *

He wakes in the morning to the dull throbbing of his back.

He’s still in the sterile white room where he vaguely remembers waking up last night. He thinks Tony was here. He remembers hearing his voice, the green hoodie he was wearing. He’s not anymore though, the chair next to the bed glaringly empty.

Maybe Peter imagined it all.

Maybe Tony regrets letting him stay the night.

He was pretty out of it last night, so it’s not exactly like he really had a choice. Maybe if he stays in here long enough everyone will forget about him and he’ll be able to slip out the elevator. Tony won’t have to awkwardly deal with telling him that he wants him out, away from his family.

Peter lies in bed, eyes focused on the clock on the wall, waiting for enough time to pass so that he’s sure everyone will be in the kitchen having breakfast and he won’t run into anyone as he makes his way out of the tower.

Five minutes later though, his door is being eased open and Tony’s there, a soft smile curling around his lips when he realises that Peter’s awake.

“Morning, Pete. How’re you feeling?

He stares for a second. Tony's... here? His plan has just gone to shit then. “Fine,” he chokes out around the lump of surprise in his throat.

Tony raises his eyebrows and Peter concedes.

“Only a little sore.” He shifts, fiddling with the soft sheets between his thumb and forefinger. “What’re you doing here?”

“I was actually sent to retrieve you for breakfast. I thought we could have a chat first though,” Tony announces. “All of our conversations have been kinda one-sided recently. Not that I’ve ever gotten sick of the sound of my own voice, so I’m not complaining, but I’d actually quite like to hear yours for once.”

Tony settles down on the unoccupied side of Peter’s bed.

“No, I meant…” Peter trails off. _What did he mean?_ He thinks he just needs Tony out, far away from him and his bad luck. “Y-You shouldn’t be here.”

This looks like it catches Tony a little off-guard for a second, expression falling into one of bewilderment before he rights himself quickly.

"And why is that?"

"I..." Peter trails off, at a loss. "I'll - I'm dangerous."

“ _Dangerous_?" he says, face softening. He sounds incredulous, as if that's the craziest thing Peter has ever said. "Peter. You know none of this is your fault, right? See, this is why we need to talk. No one blames you for anything. Life is unpredictable, sometimes these things just happen. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“This wasn’t unpredictable, Tony,” Peter says. He sounds dejected. He’s resigned himself to the words coming out of his mouth. “This wasn’t just _life_. This was _me_. You’ve given me that stupid lab safety lecture on all the rules that you don’t even follow yourself so many times, just because you don’t want me to make any mistakes, and then what do I do? I go and leave the damn soldering iron on and burn down your house and nearly-”

“I have two things to say,” Tony interjects gently. “First of all, I don’t remind you about lab safety because I don’t want you to make any mistakes, it’s because I want you to be _safe_. We’re all human, we all make mistakes and that’s exactly what this was, okay?” He rubs the thumb of the hand he’s moved to rest on Peter’s sheet-covered knee in small circles. “And secondly. Stop calling it _my house_. The cabin was your home as well. I know you were only trying to protect it, to protect us." He stops to consider his words. "You know, FRIDAY told me the man had a gun. You never mentioned that.”

“I - it didn't matter. I still should have been more careful.”

“I’d rather the house be burnt down than any of you have a bullet through you,” Tony says firmly. “That’s a fact, Pete. You were trying to protect us and usually, I like to discourage that sort of behaviour from you because it’s my job but I’m pretty damn grateful this time.”

“But what if Pepper had-”

“She didn’t,” Tony says. The relief is noticeable in his voice. “She didn’t. You can’t think like that. She’s making breakfast with Morgan. She’s fine. And so are we.”

Peter’s silent for a moment. He doesn’t know how to let go of the guilt - he’s been hanging onto it for so long now. He doesn’t know how Tony knows what he’s grappling with inside his head, or how he continues to know exactly what he needs, but he pulls Pete carefully up from his position against the pillows into his side.

“You can put out fires, Peter. You can regrow all the grass and the trees. You can rebuild a house. It doesn’t matter that we’ve lost things. Because you know what you can’t do? You can’t replace family once you’ve lost them. We’re all still here.”

* * *

The elevator doors and greet Peter and Tony into the penthouse with the sound of chaos.

All the chaos belongs to Morgan, he can tell immediately. He’d be able to pick her excitable laughter from a mile away.

She squeals when Peter and Tony turn the corner into the kitchen, and Pepper looks up from where she’s standing by the stove in surprise. Her expression relaxes into a smile at the sight of her husband, Peter curled under his arm.

“Careful, careful, baby,” Tony rushes out nervously as Morgan throws herself at Peter, tiny arms wrapping around his waist with surprising strength. “Peter’s a little hurt.”

“Like Mommy?”

The room freezes for a few seconds at that, but Pepper just shoots Peter a soft look. “Yeah, like Mommy,” she says, reverence shining in her eyes. They’re both bandaged up in gauze, Peter’s largely hidden beneath the loose t-shirt he’s got on, but Pepper’s stretching out from beneath her sleeves and down her arms in a way that makes Peter feel a little bit sick to the stomach if he looks for too long. “We’re a right pair now, aren’t we?”

Peter offers her a small smile, and that’s all the invitation she needs to round the kitchen counter and wrap Peter in a hug. Both of them are overly cautious with the other but comfort radiates off her and Peter lets himself rest his head on her shoulder and tries his best not to collapse into a wave of tears.

“I never said thank you,” she murmurs, and Peter recoils a little bit in shock.

Peter could wrack his brain for hours and not be able to come up with a single thing that Pepper owes him thanks for.

“I - you, what?” Peter stammers out.

“Thank you,” Pepper repeats, calmly and surely. “I was so sure I wasn’t getting out of there, but there you were. You saved my life.”

“You can’t say that, not when I was the one that-”

Peter breaks off when he feels a tugging at his arm. Morgan is at his side, swinging his hand back and forth in her grip eagerly. “Peter! Guess what! I can’t wait any longer to tell you!”

“See? No room for discussion, your little sister demands attention,” Pepper says firmly, not giving in even a little to Peter's self-deprecation. She side-steps the two of them to finish setting the table and Peter watches her go for a second, mouth still half hanging open. 

He doesn't know how everyone else has moved on so quickly. He wonders whether he should be giving himself a little room to grieve for the place he loved rather than letting his guilt eat away at him until he feels like there's nothing left. If Pepper's okay with him, is he allowed to be okay with himself? 

He doesn't know, but he focuses his attention back down on Morgan when there's another pull at his arm.

“Sorry. Yeah, Mo? You've got something to tell me?”

“Guess what… you’ll never guess! Daddy told Mommy you were coming so Mommy said we had to make pancakes! And it’s not even pancake morning! It’s a _Thursday_ ,” she whispers conspiratorially as if Pepper might suddenly realise the day of the week and whip all of the pancakes already on the table away from them.

Pepper doesn’t, obviously, so Peter sits around the dining table with them and they have pancake morning on a Thursday.

He tries his best to convince himself that it’s okay, that he belongs. He glances around every so often and sometimes he catches Tony watching him with such open and unguarded affection that it almost makes him shy away before he has to remind himself that this is Tony. His family - no matter what.

Tony’s too good for him. Tony forgave him for his mistakes that really didn’t deserve forgiveness, but he opened his arms up to Peter again anyway. He never actually ever closed them, Peter just shied away, undeserving. He knows better now though, as long as he can combat the voice that still hisses in the back of his mind that _he hurt them_.

Tony’s words echo in his head from last night.

Fires can be put out. The burnt grass will regrow. Houses can be rebuilt.

Family is one of the things that once they’re gone, you can never replace.

Peter knows this all too well. He’s had lots of families in his lifetime. He doesn’t want to lose this one.

Especially when he looks at Morgan, syrup smeared around her mouth, the fond smile that lights up Pepper’s face as she leans over with a napkin to wipe it off gently. Tony's affectionate eye roll, the way he watches Peter like a hawk, thinking he’s being discreet, to make sure he eats everything.

He’d do anything to protect them, time and time again. He doesn’t want any of this to go away.

“Peter,” Morgan says, voice exasperated like she’s asked him a few times. Peter shakes himself out of his head and back into the room. “Peter. _Petey_. Will you have a pancake eating competition with me?”

Tony’s face twists into a grimace. He raises an eyebrow at Peter, who’s clearly considering the proposition. “You’re the older brother, kid. If you stoop down to her level, I’m not cleaning up the sugar-induced vomit. That’s on you.”

Peter shrugs, then leans forward to pile as many pancakes on his plate as he can. Morgan squeals in delight. Tony groans. “It’s your funeral, bud.”

In this moment, if Peter Parker knows one thing for sure, it’s that he definitely can’t lose this.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! the next work in this series will be up in four days on the 12th :))
> 
> title from 'grapevine fires' - death cab for cutie
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](https://searchingforstarss.tumblr.com/)!


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